The idea that it is harder to win in the SEC is False. Everyone keeps spouting this off as if it's some sort of universal truth. The fact of the matter is that it's not true and there are ample recent examples of HCs from other programs that came into the SEC and had more success here than they had outside the SEC:

Then there are a few other coaches that pretty evenly matched their success from outside the SEC:

Petrino (C-USA/Big East) Dooley (WAC) Sumlin (C-USA)

The point is that in almost every case (Vandy and Kentucky being perhaps the most obvious exceptions), everything positive is elevated in the SEC along with the potential negative of the elevated competition. A coach outside the SEC that has been successful (or not) will almost certainly stay at that level or even become better with the increased resources at their disposal.

Coach Bielema will do fine here if he can get halfway decent recruiting classes. We will rely on redshirts, and well coached players unlike at LSU. The fact that our players this year coached by JLS looked a lot more talented on the field than LSUs just shows that the talent difference is not as big as many of you think it is.

Essentially, in your simple, simple mind: All sickness = death. There is no grey area. There is no middle ground. There is only black and white.

I said we would be best served with coach "A," having certain qualifications. WHICH, by the way, is completely irrelevant. Let me put this in terms you can understand, you poor Louisiana trash. If you say you prefer ice cream, does that mean you think cake sucks? Of course not.

quote:And just because you did 'the best you could do' with the hire doesn't make it a great hire. It means there was a weak pool of candidates and you got one of the better ones available; again i like the hire. calling it great is a stretch unless you have low expectations. which you do.

I'd ask you, once again, to name me someone we could have hired that would have had a better resume than Bielema...I'd ask, but since your pussy arse can't, or won't, answer, I'm going to stop. Because it's embarrassing.

Lower expectations? Bielema's done more at Wisconsin than anyone in their history. Remind me. Why was Les Miles a great coach at OSU even though he only won 57% of his games there. Why was that? Something about...oh yes. How BAD it was before him? That speaks to RELATIVITY. It was BAD before him. He made them respectable, to the tune of 7-5 in his last year (bravo, truly amazing).

So let's apply some RELATIVITY to Bielema. Relatively speaking, in a state with no talent, at a school with shitty facilities, he's put a lot of guys in the NFL and had pretty good success in the B1G. He took over from their coaching "legend" and took them to new heights. Those are facts. That's not me being a flaming, trolling bitch. Those are empirical, hard facts.

Will he do great at Arkansas? WHO THE frick KNOWS. We could hire Nick fricking Saban and I'd say the exact same thing. It will depend. It all depends. Will he be able to put together a great staff (since he couldn't pay his assistants at Wisconsin f'ing anything). Will any of them have recruiting ties to the south? These are things that I'm assuming were discussed prior to his hiring and that Jeff Long had assurances on.

re: How is Bielema not a terrible hire...?(Posted by ocelot4ark on 12/10/12 at 1:14 pm to drexyl)

quote:add to that Alabama, Mississippi, S. Carolina, Georgia, Florida & Texas and that's what i said.....

That's what I said, actually.

And the point was that there are more high caliber athletes that come out of those states, year in and year out, than Arkansas. Meaning that it's harder to recruit. Which went to my point that it's easier to recruit to LSU than it is to Arkansas. Which is backed up by the fact that Miles was a shitty recruiter at OSU and a great recruiter at LSU.

quote:So BB recruited at a weak state and was able to compete annually in a weak conference; so he'll defintely be able to recruit enough at an average state in the toughest division of the toughest conference in college football. I really don't see what could go wrong here with such a slam dunk of a hire.

I like how you keep throwing out the "weak conference" thing. What conferences AREN'T weak, in your estimation.

But yes. You can stop right there. He competed ANNUALLY, in spite of the fact that he was recruiting from a weak state. WEAK state. You ARE aware that weak =/= average, right? If Petrino was good at making 3 star guys play like 4 star guys; Bielema's made his 2 star guys play like 4 star guys.

But do you not think he's going to be recruiting in TX, LA, MS, OK, MO, AL, FL, GA? Seems like you're expecting his recruiting won't improve with the changing demographics. That's quite the oversight, though I'm not surprised. :moron:

re: How is Bielema not a terrible hire...?(Posted by drexyl on 12/10/12 at 1:18 pm to ocelot4ark)

quote:I said we would be best served with coach "A," having certain qualifications

you were talking about "fit" and how important that was. BB has virtually none of the necessary items to "fit" but now that doesn't matter so you pretty much have no idea what you're talking about. All sickness doesn't equal death but all of your opinions suck.

'here's what we need to be successful at Arkansas....unless we do the complete opposite and then that'll be good too.'

quote:I'd ask you, once again, to name me someone we could have hired that would have had a better resume than Bielema

I already said that of a weak talent pool you did probably the best you could have done overall. that doesn't automatically elevate BB from good to great status only because he was the best you could do at the time.

And since you brought up Les Miles he was not a great hire at the time.

re: How is Bielema not a terrible hire...?(Posted by drexyl on 12/10/12 at 1:21 pm to ocelot4ark)

quote:I like how you keep throwing out the "weak conference" thing.

you should because its true. the big ten is a weak conference especially lately.

quote:But do you not think he's going to be recruiting in TX, LA, MS, OK, MO, AL, FL, GA?

you think he is going to make inroads into these states the likes of which Arkansas has never seen or just do about what you've done every year before him. If he's going to recruit those states better than ever are you basing this off of anything other than blind faith?

re: How is Bielema not a terrible hire...?(Posted by ocelot4ark on 12/10/12 at 1:47 pm to drexyl)

quote: you were talking about "fit" and how important that was. BB has virtually none of the necessary items to "fit" but now that doesn't matter so you pretty much have no idea what you're talking about. All sickness doesn't equal death but all of your opinions suck.

'here's what we need to be successful at Arkansas....unless we do the complete opposite and then that'll be good too.'

I've already told you that MY opinion on what's best isn't the ONLY opinion that CAN work. We went to the SEC title game 2 times with Houston f'ing Nutt running this offense, except he couldn't pass the ball nearly as efficiently as Bielema's teams do. It won't be easy, but it's certainly possible to do it this way. And weren't you arguing last week that we were stupid for not wanting Les Miles? He has the same pedigree but with less passing.

If Arkansas had hired Sonny Dikes, would you have said that was a great hire? Because he had everything I wanted (pretty much - except defense).

quote:'here's what we need to be successful at Arkansas....unless we do the complete opposite and then that'll be good too.'

The only thing that's changed is the offense. I wanted more balance. 50/50 instead of 35/65. He's still going to be a helluva lot better defensively than any coach we've had since we joined the SEC. That's his calling card.

Recruiting is still a wait-and-see. He hasn't announced his staff yet.

re: How is Bielema not a terrible hire...?(Posted by ragacamps on 12/10/12 at 2:04 pm to Broketec)

He will set Arkansas back even further than Petrino did. The guy can not recruit top talent. He ran from Myer and now will have to run from Saban. Say what you want about Mile's coaching, but the man will run circles around this joker in recruiting

Oh wait there are none. He cant recruit. Good luck with a #30 ranked class or below and getting out recruited by Vandy yearly. BAMA, FL, GA, LSU, SC ,A&M, TENN, and AUB will have stronger classes and better teams

re: How is Bielema not a terrible hire...?(Posted by drexyl on 12/10/12 at 2:48 pm to ocelot4ark)

quote: And weren't you arguing last week that we were stupid for not wanting Les Miles? He has the same pedigree but with less passing.

wasn't that where your whole "fit" opinion (which i guess now is meaningless) came from? Now you hire basically a lite version of CLM and it's a "great hire". Hell not only a great hire it's one of the best hires in the entire country

I've already said you hired a good coach several times; i'm not sure why you are so concerned that i elevate my opinion of him from good to "great".

We've established he's a good coach and we've also established you have no idea what you're talking about; can't we just leave it at that?